End-to-Ends Throughout the Year

An End-to-End for a hiker of the Bruce Trail is the completion of the entire main trail on foot, after which you’ll have earned a badge to proudly announce to all that you did this! You can also complete shorter End-to-Ends of the Bruce Trail, where you hike all of the main trail in any of the nine club sections.

Each club typically runs an annual event to hike their entire section of the trail over one or several weekends, depending on how long the section is. In Caledon Hills, our section is about 72 km long and our annual event has you experiencing spectacular fall colours over the Thanksgiving weekend, with two- and three-day hiking options.

But the annual event isn’t the only time you’ll find organized hikes for completing an End-to-End in a section. The first organized hikes by Caledon Hills Bruce Trail Club that I’d been able to join in years were a spring End-to-End that Joan Richard was leading back in 2014. This End-to-End was done over six hikes, which seemed much more doable for a not-very-fit hiker like me! I was quite surprised at how much my fitness level improved over the six hikes, and although I’m still not ready to do 15 km hikes on a regular basis, it’s nice to know I was able to hike that far in one go. While I felt a huge sense of accomplishment, what I also really liked about the End-to-End hikes is that it was a great way to see the whole section in a short period of time.

When I saw that a winter End-to-End had been added to the hike schedule last month, I was intrigued by the idea. End-to-Ends aren’t just for the three seasons that we often consider as hiking season!

Sure, hiking in winter can be more challenging, since it can be hard to predict what conditions you’ll find on the trail (snow, ice, mud), and all of them can slow you down.

On the other hand, hiking in winter gives you a chance to see the trail in a different way since parts of the landscape may be blanketed by snow, and there will be different views now that leaves are off many of the trees.

We were very fortunate to have Ruth Moffatt volunteer to lead a four-hike winter End-to-End of the Caledon Hills section this year, travelling from the south end to the north end.

She led 13 hikers over the four Wednesdays in February, seven of whom will be getting badges. Thanks, Ruth, and congratulations to all who participated!

Want to know more about our End-to-End hikes? Check out our End-to-End Hikes page throughout the year.

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One thought on “End-to-Ends Throughout the Year”

I am really enjoying the features and events that you are show casing every couple of weeks Heidi. I like the easy and inspirational message of this article, “hey this is very do-able everyone, come on out”.